


A World Deformed

by methylethyl



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylethyl/pseuds/methylethyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Justin thinks that maybe, somewhere along the way, Brian became one of those pieces of the normal world that he's infected, cut out and chained to his little fucked-up world. He doesn't know if it's a nightmare or a fantasy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A World Deformed

  
**A World Deformed**   


Before the bashing, Justin's world was pretty normal. The faces he drew were honest and plain, and the lines were firm. He saw the world through the eyes of an artist who drew commissioned portraits and landscapes, and caricatured the world into silly cartoons that would one day pop out from a silver screen and make children shriek. When Justin drew a house, the walls were perpendicular to the floor, because that was the way it stood. He got into PIFA with a portfolio of fruit baskets and football players.

Then Chris Hobbs came along and swung his baseball bat, knocking his world forever askew.

This new world is rickety and slanted, unsteady on the best of days, and too fluid for him to feel like he belongs. His hands shakes and he can't draw the firm lines that, before, would have settled his nerves and made everything seem grounded. His sketches are poor representations of the chaos around him—every line he does manage to draw is too long, too flat, too dark. His sprints of fine motor control are not growing longer, as they should be. He is frustrated.

Lines have no place in his new world. Color, grit and senseless explosions have taken their place.

He understands abstract painting now. Pollack. Expressionism. Visceral language. They're flashes of clarity in his spinning, muddled world, giving him moments where he feels a connection to someone else who's navigating a world just as diseased and off-kilter as his own. When he sketches pears and hands and Rage saving the day once again, he knows that he's sketching the way his world used to be. The way everyone else sees the world. And he can use what he remembers from before the bashing to straighten, brighten and patch the world around him so that his sketches look "normal". But it feels like a betrayal.

 

"I think there are two worlds," Justin says, idly toying with Brian's hair. "There's the normal world, and then there's the fucked-up world. And it's like energy, or electricity—it's a closed system, and there can never be net loss or gain."

"That's called string theory," Brian says.

"No, this is different. String theory posits that there are dimensions, and I'm talking about worlds."

"Semantics."

The loft is silent, the sounds of car horns and sirens only a distant hum in the background. It's so dark for the hour. Winter is coming.

"I don't think the fucked-up world was ever supposed to exist," Justin tells him, his voice quiet. "Someone stole away with a part of the normal world and forced it to stand on its own. But it's too weak. Unstable. It wasn't meant to support itself, and that's why it's so fucked up. Every time I sketch something the way it's supposed to be, the way it is in the 'normal' world... a little piece of the fucked-up world slips back."

"Back to the normal world?" Brian asks. His eyebrows are raised, but he's not laughing.

"It just kind of slides back, and the fucked-up world... it's already so sickly, so broken..."

Brian watches him with dark eyes. Justin's hand goes still, and after a suspended moment he draws it back and closes his eyes.

"But when I paint what I see—" he goes on, face twisting, "—what  _I_  see, then I'm stealing part of the normal world back. Infecting it, cutting it out and chaining it to my world."

"Your world?" Brian asks.

"The fucked-up world," Justin says. His eyes open, and they shine in the darkness. "That's my world."

"So which world am I in?"

Justin lies. "I don't know."

Brian draws him closer, pressing a kiss to his forehead. Justin lets him, even as he feels the world around him—his world, his fucked up little world—ache as it struggles not to collapse on itself.

He knows that Brian lives in the normal world. He doesn't see things like Justin does, because if he did, he wouldn't be so proud of the happy-shiny-sexy ads that Kinnetik comes out with. But sometimes, Justin thinks that maybe, somewhere along the way, Brian became one of those pieces of the normal world that he's infected, cut out and chained to his little fucked-up world.

He doesn't know if it's a nightmare or a fantasy.

 

Justin finds release in painting. Before the bashing, he would sketch whatever was on his mind—or sometimes, he would sketch something else because he didn't want to dwell on whatever was on his mind. He still does that, only now with a paintbrush. There are patterns, brushstrokes and colors and curves that represent his preoccupations of the day, and it a way, it's more pure. Before, he was drawing shells—the stretch of skin across muscle, the shiny red of an apple. Now, in his new world, he sees the shells cracked open and the wispy spirits that live inside.

He paints things he could never sketch, because how can you sketch indecision? How can you sketch an argument?

He feels liberated when he paints. He feels like, even though he's alone in his world, if he can just get it down on a canvas then maybe he can create a window. A portal. A screen. And instead of playing tug-of-war between the two worlds, they could blend and merge and maybe he'd feel normal again. Maybe he could draw a house with walls perpendicular to the floor.

 

"You don't paint me," Brian comments one day, out of the blue.

Justin frowns.

Brian shrugs one shoulder. "You used to draw me all the time. How come you don't ever paint me?"

"I don't need to paint your body," Justin says. "That's the easy part."

He hasn't sketched Brian in ages, possibly not since he worked on Rage, and that wasn't even really Brian. But in his paintings, Brian is everywhere. He's a green splotch and winding black lines and the golden weave banding across the right corner, the stormy brushes of gray, the streak of orange...

Justin never feels more in love than when he's painting Brian.

"The hard part is finding a way to paint the rest of you," Justin finally tells him. "The parts only I can see."

Brian pulls him in for a kiss, and when they separate, he murmurs, shaking his head, "Just once, I'd like to see the world through your eyes."

"You couldn't handle it," Justin says, with a bit of a smirk.

And they go through the obligatory teasing, chasing, tickling, and of course wind up having sex on the couch. But afterward, Justin thinks that he never wants Brian to see his world through anything more than the paintings he creates, because those are just images. Just colors. They don't truly capture the anxiousness, the constant threat of collapse, the scent of decay—and they never will.

Justin's world is a blessing. It's a curse. And it's his to bear alone.


End file.
